The 369,000-Word Anchor

A Courthouse That Needed a Constitutional Amendment

In the 2026 Regular Session, the Alabama Legislature passed HB191—a bill to amend the Constitution of Alabama so that the district court in Escambia County could hold sessions inside the county courthouse.

Read that again. A courthouse. Being used as a courthouse. Required a constitutional amendment.

HB191 isn’t an anomaly. It’s the system working exactly as designed—by a document written in 1901 that stripped Alabama’s counties and cities of the power to manage their own affairs. The result, 125 years later, is a state legislature that must approve the most routine local decisions through the most extraordinary legal mechanism available: amending the state constitution.

The Same Bill, Eight Times

If HB191 illustrates the absurdity of one local bill, the senior property tax exemption bills illustrate the absurdity at scale.

In this single session, the Legislature has filed eight separate constitutional amendments to allow taxpayers aged 65 and older to claim a senior property tax exemption. The bills are functionally identical. The only difference is the county name:

This isn’t eight different policy debates. It’s the same debate, repeated eight times, because the constitution won’t allow a single statewide solution and won’t let counties decide for themselves.

The Economic Development Cost

Here is where the constitutional anchor becomes more than a governance inconvenience. It becomes a competitive disadvantage that costs Alabama jobs.

In 2024, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison announced that the company would move its $1.35 billion world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee—bringing 8,500 high-paying jobs, a 70-acre riverfront campus designed by the architect of Apple’s headquarters, and the kind of economic momentum that transforms a city for a generation.

Tennessee landed that deal with a straightforward incentive package: $65 million in state grants and a property tax rebate structured by Metro Nashville. The decision was made, approved, and executed through normal legislative and municipal processes. No constitutional amendments were required. No statewide referendum on a local tax incentive. No waiting for the Legislature to convene.

When a Fortune 500 company evaluates Southern states for a major investment, speed and certainty matter. A site consultant comparing Alabama to Tennessee doesn’t need to read 369,000 words to see the problem. Alabama’s constitution requires extraordinary measures for ordinary decisions. Tennessee’s doesn’t.

This isn’t speculation. The Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform has documented how the constitution prohibits state and local governments from participating in internal improvements or economic development activities without constitutional authorization. Counties have needed constitutional amendments just to create incentives to attract new business—complicating, delaying, and sometimes killing deals entirely.

This Is Not a Liberal or Conservative Issue

Constitutional reform is a good government issue. It’s a small government issue. The conservative position has always been that decisions should be made at the lowest level of government possible—as close to the people as the issue allows. Alabama’s constitution does the exact opposite. It forces the most local decisions to the highest level of state government.

A county commission in Colbert County should be able to grant a senior tax exemption to its own residents without sending a constitutional amendment to Montgomery. A district court in Escambia County should be able to use the county courthouse without a vote of the full Legislature. And when a company like Oracle comes looking for a Southern state to invest $1.35 billion, Alabama should be able to compete on equal footing with Tennessee—not with one hand tied behind its back by a document written before the Wright Brothers flew.

President Trump has said repeatedly that we need to cut red tape and let states move at the speed of business. Alabama’s constitution is the definition of red tape—388,000 words of it. If we’re serious about leading the America First movement, we need a governing document that lets Alabama lead, not one that forces our Legislature to spend a third of its limited session deciding whether a county courthouse can be used as a courthouse.

Alabama deserves better. Our Legislature deserves to spend its time on the issues that matter to all Alabamians—education, public safety, immigration enforcement, and economic growth. And our counties and cities deserve the basic authority to govern themselves.

The 1901 Constitution was written to concentrate power and prevent progress. In 2026, it’s still doing exactly that.